Drone Debrief: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming divisive. Their battlefield roles range from the benign, to the deadly. As UAVs are used more, embarrassing incidents are also on the rise. Here's a roundup of the good, the bad, and the ugliest incidents.

Unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming divisive. Their battlefield roles range from the benign, like carrying supplies to U.S. troops on the ground, to the deadly, like the increasing drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan. As UAVs are used more, embarrassing incidents also rise—ground controllers losing control of test drones or crashing them on missions. Here's a roundup of the good, bad, and ugly incidents.

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K-Max (K-1200)

THE GOOD

The K-Max helicopter, certified to fly as far back as 1994, is a synchropter— a helicopter with intermeshing rotors that spin in different directions to optimize lift. It can operate without a tail rotor. Since its deployment in December of last year, K-max has delivered more than 1 million pounds of cargo and supplies to Marines stationed in Afghanistan, decreasing the need for trucks to travel routes that could be lined with roadside bombs. Beyond military purposes, the unmanned vehicle could also be used like its civilian relatives, assisting with construction projects and providing disaster relief.

Two years after its maiden flight, we still don't know the X-37B's purpose. According to the Pentagon, the general objective of the space plane's second mission, USA-226, is to test new aerospace technologies, like improved guidance systems and thermal shielding, before they are implemented in other spacecraft. But wilder ideas about the craft have been floating around, such as space bomber or spyplane.

We do know that the X-37B has been in orbit on its current mission for more than a year; it launched in March 2011. Based on X-37B's spectacular success, future missions for the spacecraft could include carrying more elaborate experiments into space and then safely returning them back to earth for further inspection and analysis. It's scheduled to land later this month.

More than 15 universities have been certified to operate drones in U.S. airspace. More will certainly come after September 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration's deadline to set guidelines for opening U.S. airspace to more UAVs.

On August 2, 2010, the U.S. Navy was performing a test flight of the Fire Scout when the Naval Air Station in the Patuxent River lost contact with the helo. The Fire Scout drone wandered from the southern coast of Maryland toward Washington, D.C., eventually crossing into the district's restricted airspace. The Navy regained control of the drone 40 miles before it reached Washington, forcing it to land and avoiding further panic or embarassment.

Capt. Tim Dunigan, then the Navy's head of the Fire Scout project, blamed the problem on software; the helicopter should have made a return trip once it lost contact with the Navy. Losing control of a drone so close to restricted airspace gave the Navy a bit of a public relations black eye. The Fire Scout project was grounded in April of this year, perhaps due to two drone crashes in a week.

The U.S. is far from the only country building drones. Ghods Aviation in Iran manufactures the Ababil, but other countries and groups in the region and beyond have used it. Hezbollah tried to attack Israel with the Ababil in 2006, but all drones were shot down before they could cause damage. The Ababil may pale in comparison to modern U.S. drones, but it's still worth keeping an eye on. It's suspected that the Sudanese government used the drone to attack rebel forces earlier this year.

A Lockheed Martin Sentinel drone crashed in Iran last December, and since then both sides have made a series of questionable claims. The U.S. claims that the drone was surveying Afghanistan, veered off course, and crashed in Iran due to technical problems. Iran is skeptical, saying that the drone was always intent on spying on Iran, and that it was able to be taken down due to electronic jamming by Iranian forces. Regardless of who's right, the drone was captured in Iranian airspace and the U.S. shouldn't expect them to return it. They're more than willing to send over a toy replica though.

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